From one of Rorate Caeli’s most recent posts, several significant if perhaps unsurprising revelations from Francis I had missed, given that I now generally avoid him and his pronouncements as much as possible. Was the Church better off before instant worldwide communication? Hard to say. It was probably a lot easier on individual souls, however.

The slight – it can certainly be taken as such, and may well have been intended – against Our Lady in ignoring the 99th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun in order to receive Lutheran heretics and schismatics in audience (while displaying a statue of the arch-heretic Luther in the Vatican) on the same day is truly breathtaking. But that’s just the start, as it always seems to be with the Argentine Bishop of Rome (my emphasis):

…..The start of the centenary of the Fatima apparitions on October 13th 2016 was buried under a blanket of silence. That same day, Pope Francis received in the Paul VI Audience Hall, a thousand Lutheran “pilgrims” and in the Vatican a statue of Martin Luther was honoured, as appears in the images Antonio Socci published on his Facebook page. Next October 31st, moreover, Pope Francis will go to Lund in Sweden, where he will take part in a joint Catholic-Lutheran ceremony commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. As can be read in the communiqué drawn up by the World Lutheran Federation and the Papal Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, the aim of the event is “to express the gifts of the Reform and ask forgiveness for the division perpetuated by Christians of the two traditions.”…….[Which expression seems to imply at least an equal sharing of blame for this “division,” if not that more share falls on the Catholic side. Naturally, this is a complete inversion of reality, but that should hardly be surprising]

…….During his audience with the Lutherans on October 13th, Pope Bergoglio also said that proselytism, is “the strongest poison” against ecumenism. “The greatest reformers are the saints – he added – and the Church is always in need of reform”. [This strongly implies sainthood for Luther, does it not? How many of the Saints warred with all their being not just against protestant heretics but heretics of all stripes? I guess that fact just has to go down the memory hole for Francis] These words contain simultaneously, as is frequent in his discourses, a truth and a deception. The truth is that the saints, from St Gregory VII to St. Pius X, have [indeed] been the greatest reformers. The deception consists in insinuating that the pseudo-reformers, like Luther, are to be considered saints. The statement that proselytism or the missionary spirit, is “the strongest poison against ecumenism” must, instead, be reversed: ecumenism, as it is understood today, is the greatest poison against the Church’s missionary spirit. The Saints have always been moved by this spirit, beginning with the Jesuits who landed in Brazil, [No, it started long before that, with the first Apostles] the Congo and the Indies in the XVI century, while their confreres Diego Lainez, Alfonso Salmeron and Peter Canisio, at the Council of Trent, fought against the errors of Lutheranism and Calvinism.

Yet, according to Pope Francis those outside the Church do not have to be converted. At the audience on October 13th, in an off-the-cuff response to questions from some young people, he said: “I like good Lutherans a lot, Lutherans who truly follow the faith of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, I don’t like lukewarm Catholics and lukewarm Lutherans.” With another deformation in language, Pope Bergoglio calls “good Lutherans” those Protestants who do not follow the faith of Jesus Christ, but its deformation and “lukewarm Catholics” those fervent sons and daughters of the Church who reject the equalizing of the truth of the Catholic religion with the error of Lutheranism. [Indeed. Still more, what is being extolled here is one religion – modernist sexular paganism – while warring against the Faith instituted by Jesus Christ. That’s what this conflict has always come down to, from Tyrell and Loisy to Congar and Rahner to Bergoglio and Kasper]

All of this brings us to the question: what will happen in Lund on October 31st? We know that the commemoration will include a joint celebration based on the Liturgical Catholic-Lutheran guide, Common Prayer, elaborated from the document From Conflict to Communion. The Common Catholic-Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, drawn-up by the Catholic-Lutheran Commission for the unity of Christians. There are those who rightly fear an “intercommunion” between Catholic and Lutherans, which would be sacrilegious, since the Lutherans do not believe in Transubstantiation. Above all, that it will be said Luther was not a heresiarch, but a reformer unjustly persecuted and that the Church has to recuperate the “gifts of the Reform”. Those who persist in considering the condemnation of Luther proper and think his followers heretics and schismatics, must be harshly criticised and excluded from the Church of Pope Francis. But then again, what Church does Jorge Mario Begoglio belong to?

A rhetorical question, obviously, as to ask the question is to answer it.

As for just where Francis may stand in the grand scheme of things, including the state of his soul, a reminder from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus, Chapter iii:

10 A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid:

11 Knowing that he that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.

There have, of course, been multiple admonitions directed at Francis. We are generally not privy to the tack those interventions have taken, however.

I think one thing it is safe to say, Francis will not be the Bishop in white of the Third Secret? I can’t see the world taking shots at him, when he’s doing such an awesome job for them.